Perhaps my favorite part of my job is getting a sneak peek at what others do for a living in our Punching the Clock series. I am always amazed by the business and industry that exists in Chenango County, much of it unknown to the general populace.
The Page Seed Company in Greene, the site of my most recent on-the-job experience, is a prime example. Founded in 1896, Page is a historic part of the Greene community and a thriving business. In fact, it’s one of the largest seed packagers in the world. It employs between 65 and 100 people, depending on the season.
This week’s visit to the historic seed company wasn’t really a first for me. I remember touring it as part of a primary school field trip. My recollection may be vague, but I do remember thousands of colorful seed packets with every conceivable variety of flower and vegetable. In fact, their seeds were what we used to plant our garden when I was growing up.
Page’s still packages all of those seeds, shipping them to distributors and retailers all over the U.S. and even to Puerto Rico. Their biggest retail garden customer of the moment is Family Dollar, an order so big it takes nearly five months to fill.
The seeds are packaged on the first floor of Page’s facility, which was originally built in 1902. From there, they travel to the third floor where they are counted out to fill thousands of display racks. This is where I was put to work when I arrived at the seed company on Wednesday.
Sounds easy, right? I thought so. But I knew it wasn’t going to be as easy as it looked when Joyce and Diane (the wonderful ladies who took me under their wing) told me I need to wrap my fingers before I got started. Apparently I wasn’t allowed to bleed on anything. (Do you think news of my startling lack of manual dexterity has gotten around?)
Diane started me on the flower packets: white Alyssium, Bachelor Buttons, flaming Cockscombs, colorful Cosmos, Shasta Daisies and Marigolds. They made me think of spring despite the sleet tapping on the window.
My job was to count out 13 of each and put them in the rack. It didn’t take me long to realize that there was no way I could count and talk at the same time. I held up the line a bit, and had to recount every other hand, but I managed not to cut myself, which I saw as a victory all its own.
As lunchtime neared (and Diane got tired of me), I moved up the line to the vegetables – where I was nearly done in by the beets. I was pretty sure the slippery packets were actually filled with Mexican jumping beans rather than the garden vegetable, which, until that point, had been a favorite of mine.
While the staff had lunch, I spent some quality time with Linda LaRosa-Mosner, who serves as product development and global marketing manager. She opened my eyes to the fact that while the flower and vegetable seed packets with which I was now intimately familiar were a mainstay of Page Seeds, it’s not all they do by any means.
In addition to their retail garden line, the seed company also has a professional landscaping division which sells turf and grass seed as well as a new Ag & Farm division to market directly to farmers. They also make use of their packaging capabilities to package everything from bath salts to potpourri.
And you know those cute little growing kits for herbs and sunflowers you see all over come spring? Page’s packages the seeds for many of them. Those foil packets are then shipped to Hong Kong, where the final product is assembled.
According to CEO Lyn Granger, the fastest-growing segment of the business is customized imprinting. I’ve seen seed packets used as business cards by realtors and other professionals wanting to “help grow your (fill in the blank),” but that’s only the tip of the iceberg. Scratch-off packets, wedding favors, invitations, mailers, even Christmas cards – the possibilities are truly endless.
How about a movie promotion? Page Seeds have helped promote “The Secret Garden,” “Driving Miss Daisy” and even “Wallace & Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit” (carrot seeds, of course).
Some are small runs of 500 to 1,000 packets. Others are in the hundreds of thousands. Page has done work for everyone from small companies to big names like John Deere, McDonald’s and A & W Root Beer to American Express.
When I hit the packaging line after lunch, they were working on an order for Glade. The packets of blue Forget Me Not seeds, nearly a million of them, are destined to help launch a new fragrance or product for the company.
Judy Lance, who has been working at Page on and off since she turned 17, drew the short straw. She got stuck with me as a sidekick for the afternoon.
I was a little nervous about trying my hand at the packaging machine, given my track record, but I needn’t have worried. Surprisingly enough, I got the hang of it pretty quickly and was able to keep up the pace of the 72 packets a minute the machine spit out.
Under Judy’s expert guidance, I kept the machine stocked with empty packets and packed the finished product 1,000 to a box – all along keeping an eye on the different processes going on with the machine and occasionally pulling out a packet to make sure it met the weight requirements.
There was one close call when I accidentally inserted the empty sleeves backwards, but Judy caught the mistake before it caused a problem. (Thank goodness.)
I don’t think that any of Page’s employees need to worry about me taking over their jobs. I hope I didn’t put them too far behind on that Family Dollar order.
I dreamed of all those packets last night, and woke up looking forward to spring.